Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Ah, welcome back to it could happen here a podcast
Speaker 2: about things falling apart. And whenever you have things falling apart,
Speaker 2: you have the Daily Wire. I don't know, Garrison, what
Speaker 2: are we talking about today?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Daily Wire has been our our trusted companions
Speaker 3: among the rise of the alt right and this kind
Speaker 3: of just impending sense of bad that has been, you know,
Speaker 3: increasing the past five, ten years, twenty years, thirty years,
Speaker 3: you know. So Mia in the last episode talked about
Speaker 3: some of the neoliberal conditions that kind of led to
Speaker 3: this dip in church attendance, and it's resulted in the
Speaker 3: Christian right kind of changing formations in a few interesting ways.
Speaker 3: And we're going to talk about that here, but now
Speaker 3: no more specifically about how the Daily Wire has been
Speaker 3: able to profit off of this shift. So as third spaces,
Speaker 3: including churches die off, online spaces have been gun to
Speaker 3: fill the gaps, from Facebook groups to content creators to
Speaker 3: conservative streaming services. The organizational hub of the far right
Speaker 3: has been picked up by opportunistic bloggers and aspiring movie moguls.
Speaker 3: Which brings us to twenty thirteen, a perfect year. Nothing
Speaker 3: went wrong, just a normal, normal time. So In twenty thirteen,
Speaker 3: we had failed screenwriter Ben Shapiro and failed movie producer
Speaker 3: Jeremy Boring. They started working together on a project called
Speaker 3: Truth Revolt. Now, I assume most of us are somewhat
Speaker 3: familiar with Ben Shapiro. He was an editor at Breitbart
Speaker 3: This He started as a young conservative blogger who gained
Speaker 3: prominence in the twentyds and the twenty teens. So I'm
Speaker 3: not gonna waste too much time going into the background
Speaker 3: of Ben because I'm I'm guessing we all basically know
Speaker 3: who Benhapiro is. But I'm also guessing that almost no
Speaker 3: one listening to this probably knows who Jeremy Boring is,
Speaker 3: hence the name, So I'm gonna be focusing a lot
Speaker 3: on Jeremy. I find Jeremy to be a kind of
Speaker 3: fascinating person. I almost weirdly enjoy watching his stuff just
Speaker 3: because I find it to be extremely fascinating. His demeanor,
Speaker 3: his way of going about creating a conservative media empire,
Speaker 3: I find to be really intriguing. I've watched Jeremy Boring
Speaker 3: stuff just as like a voyeurist observer for years now,
Speaker 3: and he's actually starting to become more of a prominent
Speaker 3: face among the right wing media ecosystem, or at least
Speaker 3: he's been putting his face out there for a while.
Speaker 3: Most of the time he's just been behind the scenes.
Speaker 3: So Jeremy Boring is just A is A is A
Speaker 3: is a good Christian boy from a small town in Texas.
Speaker 3: He got involved in kind of local town. Yeah. I
Speaker 3: I forget the exact town because I didn't I didn't
Speaker 3: write it down in the script, but I believe it's
Speaker 3: somewhere in West Texas if I remember correctly. It's it's
Speaker 3: it's It's been a while since I watched the two
Speaker 3: hour interview with Jeremy Boring where he discussed his upbringing.
Speaker 2: God, I wonder if it's Lufkin. I'm pulling it up.
Speaker 2: I'm pulling it up Slayton. Okay, Okay, Well still a
Speaker 2: dog shit Texas.
Speaker 3: Yeah. See, that's why I didn't mention it, because it's like, who.
Speaker 2: Can's in Lubbock County, Mike love it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: He was kind of involved in some local community theater
Speaker 3: productions as a kid, and like a lot of kids,
Speaker 3: he aspired to be an actor, so as a young
Speaker 3: adult he moved to La He very soon gave up
Speaker 3: acting I think he had one small bit role as
Speaker 3: like a crying soldier, but besides that, he just couldn't
Speaker 3: get any work, so instead he decided to become a
Speaker 3: struggling screenwriter. A classic classic move were moving from a
Speaker 3: failed actor. Yes, yes, yes, exactly. In the early two thousands,
Speaker 3: he got invited to a Hollywood Bible study group with
Speaker 3: a whole bunch of like young C list celebrities, and
Speaker 3: over time he evolved into a sort of pastoral role
Speaker 3: within the group. And then in two thousand and seven
Speaker 3: he was able to write and produce his first movie, Spiral,
Speaker 3: starring Zachary Levi, who now played Shazam in DC's movies
Speaker 3: and really nothing else because he seems to be a
Speaker 3: deeply unlikable person who has not really been hired in
Speaker 3: many other things. But Zachary Levi was also in this
Speaker 3: like a Christian Bible study group. They were both friends,
Speaker 3: him and Jeremy Boring. So they made this movie Spiral.
Speaker 3: It grossed just over three thousand dollars, So not the
Speaker 3: smash hit that you know you would you you would
Speaker 3: hopeful for your first movie.
Speaker 2: That is, uh yeah, that's not great.
Speaker 3: It's not it's it's not it's not perfect. Now. Jeremy
Speaker 3: Boring claims that his religious and political beliefs made it
Speaker 3: so that he wasn't able to progress very far in
Speaker 3: the Hollywood system. But he was invited to a secret
Speaker 3: meeting of conservatives in Hollywood called the Friends of ABE
Speaker 3: that Robert, you should you should look up the Friends
Speaker 3: of Abe logo because it's really good.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: I think people like like, uh, like John Voight and
Speaker 3: just you know those sort of.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, it sounds like I think John Voight would
Speaker 2: be a member of Yes.
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm pretty sure John voightt was a member of
Speaker 3: this group.
Speaker 2: God, they're and they're treating it. They're treating it. There
Speaker 2: was like a Friends of something or other group that
Speaker 2: was like an underground group providing reproductive healthcare service back
Speaker 2: before abortion, back for Roe v. Wade, which is clearly
Speaker 2: what they're Oh god is the who made this logo?
Speaker 2: This is like bad clip art. Oh my god, it's
Speaker 2: quite good.
Speaker 3: So he was he was invited to this secret meeting,
Speaker 3: the Friends of ABE, and this is where he met
Speaker 3: another friend of the pod, Andrew Breitbart. So this is
Speaker 3: this is actually really a really important too, Yes, a
Speaker 3: very important weird subcultural community within Hollywood. So as Jeremy
Speaker 3: was trying to move into just movie producing, he was
Speaker 3: actually asked to take over this Friends of Abe group.
Speaker 3: So he became a very central role and he made
Speaker 3: a lot of connections, connections that will soon become important
Speaker 3: when we discuss The Daily Wire's own adventures in movie
Speaker 3: producing in the in the next episode or so. So
Speaker 3: he took over this group. Eventually he had this other
Speaker 3: smaller Bible study group, so he's kind of moving up
Speaker 3: in the world of conservative secret meetings in Hollywood. So
Speaker 3: because he met Andrew bite Bart at the Friends of Abe,
Speaker 3: Andrew bype Bart obviously knows Ben Shapiro because Shapiro used
Speaker 3: to be the editor at Breitbart News.
Speaker 2: Also, I feel the need to note the Friends of
Speaker 2: Abe was founded by Gary Sinise, who was in such
Speaker 2: beloved movies as well. I think the only beloved movie
Speaker 2: he was in was Forrest Gump where he played Lieutenant Dan.
Speaker 3: Oh he did Bobe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is Lieutenant Dan founded the group, which is
Speaker 2: actually like Lieutenant Dan would be in the Friends of Abe,
Speaker 2: so that kind of fits. He also had apparently a
Speaker 2: bit roll our some role in Apollo thirteen I forget who.
Speaker 2: So there you go, Gary Sinise. Great.
Speaker 3: So around this time is when Ben Shapiro and Jeremy
Speaker 3: Borning first met, just before like twenty ten. I think
Speaker 3: the two met via Andrew bite Bart, whom Ben was
Speaker 3: working for at the time at Breitbart News. Now. Jeremy
Speaker 3: and Ben hit it off, and they decided that they
Speaker 3: would want to work together to create media to quote
Speaker 3: unquote influence culture. That's a term that Boring uses quite
Speaker 3: a lot, is like influencing culture now. Boring was very
Speaker 3: impressed by Shapiro and sought to propel Shapiro's fame and
Speaker 3: wanted to create a platform and wanted to create a
Speaker 3: platform to increase Ben's ability to impact politics on a
Speaker 3: larger scale. He really thought he saw something in Ben that,
Speaker 3: if utilized, could make Ben into a pretty major celebrity.
Speaker 3: Boring was friendly with board members of the David Horowitz
Speaker 3: Freedom Center, an extremely racist, anti Muslim right wing think
Speaker 3: tank I believe based in law. Boring thought that Ben
Speaker 3: and David had a lot in common. They were both
Speaker 3: very like politically feisty Jewish conservatives in the LA scene,
Speaker 3: and Boring wanted to prepare Ben to sort of carry
Speaker 3: the torch of the Freedom Center using all of the
Speaker 3: resources that David Horowitz have built up over a long
Speaker 3: period of time. So for a year and a half,
Speaker 3: Boring met with board members behind the scenes to create
Speaker 3: some sort of buy in and cast Ben Shapiro as
Speaker 3: the future for the Freedom Center, planning seeds of what
Speaker 3: it will be to come. Eventually, David Horwitz chose Ben
Speaker 3: as the heir to the Freedom Center first by giving
Speaker 3: Shapiro and Boring an opportunity to test things out by
Speaker 3: starting a company under the Freedom Center called Truth Revolt.
Speaker 3: Truth Revolt is something that I didn't I think I
Speaker 3: saw it a little bit when I was like a
Speaker 3: younger teen, but it wasn't It wasn't super popular. Truth
Speaker 3: Revolt saw some initial success as like a conservative quote
Speaker 3: unquote news site aimed at exposing leftist media. Shapiro billed
Speaker 3: Truth Revolt as the quote unquote anti media matters Now.
Speaker 3: Shapiro admits that Truth of Volt ultimately wasn't very sustainable
Speaker 3: because the whole website was designed around trying to generate
Speaker 3: traffic by being linked by Drudge Report, and at the time.
Speaker 2: That's like literally literally like a third of right wing
Speaker 2: media in the early two thousands to mid auts like
Speaker 2: that was Alex Jones's whole strategy for a while too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the whole point was creating headlines that would be
Speaker 3: linked by this conservative news aggregator. And this isn't a
Speaker 3: very sustainable business model, at least that's what Ben now claims.
Speaker 3: And because truth Revolt was operating under the Freedom Center,
Speaker 3: it was run as a nonprofit and received very limited
Speaker 3: funding and little to no advertising budget. But even back then,
Speaker 3: there was a big focus on creating video content to
Speaker 3: fill out the site and grow its own YouTube page.
Speaker 3: I have a wonderful screenshot here of some old truth
Speaker 3: Revolt videos from like nine ten years ago. We have
Speaker 3: brass tax on immigration. Andrew Cleavan I think his name
Speaker 3: is Clevan. He's he's one of the main Daily Wire
Speaker 3: guys now, but he was involved way way back then.
Speaker 3: He has a video on Obama conspiracy theories, which I'm
Speaker 3: sure that's great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't wait to dig into that one.
Speaker 3: Ben Shapiro has a lot of videos about why Jews
Speaker 3: vote leftist. We have videos about Hillary Clinton. We have
Speaker 3: the left's magical thinking. This is another Andrew Clvan video
Speaker 3: called fifty Shades of Barack Obama. So again all like
Speaker 3: very very like twenty twelve type stuff here, like all
Speaker 3: all very like early early twenty teen.
Speaker 2: They were iterating, they were cooking.
Speaker 3: They were cooking, and like cooking, sometimes your first attempt
Speaker 3: doesn't really work out. Truth of Bolt started declining in
Speaker 3: around early twenty fifteen, but Jeremy Boring was working on
Speaker 3: a business plan with a more marketing driven approach. Instead
Speaker 3: of relying on like nonprofit annual donors, Boring wanted to
Speaker 3: use a more of a for profit model where they
Speaker 3: use ad revenue and the larger web traffic generated through
Speaker 3: marketing on social media, especially on Facebook, to pay for
Speaker 3: this entire media operation. Now, the old guard of this
Speaker 3: conservative think tank did not really like this plan. The
Speaker 3: Freedom Center actually fired Jeremy Boring when he produced this
Speaker 3: plan to revamp Truth Revolt, and soon after Ben Shapiro
Speaker 3: stepped down. This was in April of twenty fifteen. Jeremy
Speaker 3: and board Jeremy and Ben attempted to buy out the site,
Speaker 3: but that didn't pan out, and eventually Truth Revolt just
Speaker 3: withered away. Do you know what else slowly withers away
Speaker 3: over time?
Speaker 2: You without the products and services that support this podcast.
Speaker 3: That's right, all right, we are back. Thank the maker
Speaker 3: for all of those wonderful products and services that let
Speaker 3: me spend about ten hours day watching Daily Wire videos
Speaker 3: so I could write like four thousand words.
Speaker 2: Truly, this was Sophie's grand dream when she began this.
Speaker 3: Just have a wall of computers constantly playing daily Wire
Speaker 3: plus exclusive content.
Speaker 2: That was the pitch we came to corporate with, what
Speaker 2: if we exposed a man to all of the Daily
Speaker 2: Wire one could possibly consume?
Speaker 3: Hell oh, by all right, So Jeremy Boring, failed movie producer,
Speaker 3: failed screenwriter, has been fired from Truth Revolt. Ben Shapiro,
Speaker 3: his colleague in arms, steps down in solidarity. We love
Speaker 3: to see workers unite. So Shapiro and Boring still liked
Speaker 3: their plan to use ad revenue in social media advertising
Speaker 3: to make a for profit media company. So in twenty
Speaker 3: fifteen they looked for other investors to fund a new website.
Speaker 3: And it just so happened that around this time, two
Speaker 3: Texas billionaires known as the Wilks Brothers. We're looking to
Speaker 3: use their fracking fortune to quote unquote influence culture. There's
Speaker 3: that term again. Through a mutual friend, Boring was able
Speaker 3: to secure millions of dollars in seed money from the Wilkes,
Speaker 3: who also later went on to fund prager You. With
Speaker 3: an influx of cash on hand, Ben and Jeremy started
Speaker 3: The Daily Wire initially just as a conservative news site,
Speaker 3: but with ambitions to become an entire conservative entertainment production
Speaker 3: and distribution house. Instead of relying on donors or links
Speaker 3: from news aggregators, their new approach was focused on creating
Speaker 3: and cultivating a long term audience. They first prioritized quote
Speaker 3: unquote investing in making Ben and other up and coming
Speaker 3: conservative figureheads more famous, in particular, using an intentional social
Speaker 3: media strategy to propel people from out of the conservative
Speaker 3: bubble into the popular zeitgeist. Specifically, Jerry Bor worked to
Speaker 3: increase the personal brand awareness on sites other than Twitter,
Speaker 3: where generally most of these writers spend most of their
Speaker 3: social media hours. The point was to not just do
Speaker 3: it on Twitter, instead do it on the other social
Speaker 3: media sites where actual, like regular people spend more of
Speaker 3: their time because it's mostly just other writers on Twitter
Speaker 3: versus the actual audience that the Daily Wire wanted to attract,
Speaker 3: or mostly spending their time on places like Facebook or Instagram.
Speaker 3: So fourteen months in the Daily Wire was already cash
Speaker 3: flow positive, and we see this approach of specifically trying
Speaker 3: to like create celebrity. It really paid off. If you
Speaker 3: look at how how like the cultural figure of Ben
Speaker 3: Shapiro specifically kind of emerged in the mid two thousands,
Speaker 3: Like he became such like a meme, such like a
Speaker 3: recognizable character through very simple marketing on like YouTube, on Facebook.
Speaker 3: It was. It was wildly successful. You cannot open up
Speaker 3: YouTube with out seeing a Ben Shapiro destroys college student
Speaker 3: on campus video, like every single every single time. Now,
Speaker 3: on top of making a news site, they also decided
Speaker 3: to move into podcasting, a very controversial medium. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: I'm gonna read one quote from Ben here. Quote. One
Speaker 3: area that we had no idea was going to be
Speaker 3: the center of revenue was the actual podcast. When I
Speaker 3: look back at that business plan, what we had allocated
Speaker 3: for the amount of revenue from the podcast was minimal
Speaker 3: compared to how successful the podcast became. And that cannot
Speaker 3: be understated. The Daily Wire makes a shitload of money
Speaker 3: on their podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we all, we all were surprised by how lucrative
Speaker 2: prop podcasting wound up being like because it was it
Speaker 2: was around for like a decade or so before it
Speaker 2: was it, before people were really making any money off
Speaker 2: of it. It's it kind of snowballed very quickly once
Speaker 2: advertisers realized it was something they could get in on.
Speaker 2: But like it was, there was a long time where
Speaker 2: it was just sort of like a thing weird little
Speaker 2: guy like Joe Rogan did and most people didn't really
Speaker 2: think about them much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and their social media advertising plan also worked outrageously well,
Speaker 3: especially on Facebook. Routinely, over the past few years, stories
Speaker 3: published by The Daily Wire received more likes, shares, and
Speaker 3: comments on Facebook than any other news publisher by a
Speaker 3: wide margin. Shapiro has more followers in The Washington Post,
Speaker 3: their engagement outpaces the New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC, CNN,
Speaker 3: and Fox News on average by over ten times, and
Speaker 3: they often get more clicks on their articles than all
Speaker 3: of those outlets combined. They have like they figured out
Speaker 3: a really successful method to promoting their news content in
Speaker 3: a way that really no one else has been able
Speaker 3: to replicate. Utilizing provocative rage bait propagandized by a select
Speaker 3: few of online personalities, the Daily Wire has been able
Speaker 3: to expand the brand recognition of not just their own
Speaker 3: site but also the person brand of its own hosts.
Speaker 3: Ben and Jeremy brought over some of the people from
Speaker 3: Truth Revolt, but they were also scouting for new talent
Speaker 3: among the twenty sixteen Conservative spear to invest their newly
Speaker 3: acquired fracking resources into. Another quote from Ben is like
Speaker 3: surround yourself with people who are going to be successful unquote,
Speaker 3: particularly not like going after people who are currently popular,
Speaker 3: but trying to find up and coming content creators who
Speaker 3: they think they can turn into being much more successful
Speaker 3: than what they currently started as. Among the people they
Speaker 3: recruited was the relatively unknown extremist Christian writer and radio
Speaker 3: talk show host Matt Walsh, who we will get to
Speaker 3: in a sec the slightly more famous blogger Candice Owens,
Speaker 3: who was picked up a few years prior by the
Speaker 3: conservative student group Turning Point USA to be their quote
Speaker 3: director of Urban Engagement, which is an awful title what
Speaker 3: they mean by I wonder what they mean by urban engagement.
Speaker 3: And then in twenty twenty, after being a Daily Wire
Speaker 3: correspondent for a few years and helping to launch Ted
Speaker 3: Cruz's own podcast, the Daily Wire hired failed actor Michael Knowles,
Speaker 3: who's basically a discount Matt Walsh to host his own podcast,
Speaker 3: And finally, in twenty twenty two, the Daily Wire recruited
Speaker 3: Jordan Peterson, probably their biggest get to date after he
Speaker 3: quote unquote retired from the University of Toronto. The original
Speaker 3: funding pitch to the Wilkes Brothers, who are looking to
Speaker 3: influence culture, explicitly positioned the Daily Wire not just as
Speaker 3: a news site, but as a prospective alternative to the
Speaker 3: liberal Hollywood monopoly. There's a really interesting quote here from
Speaker 3: Jeremy Boring quote, I think there is a path for
Speaker 3: conservatives to create entertainment, but I think you have to
Speaker 3: go about it in a roundabout way. We need a
Speaker 3: marketing and distribution mechanism that allows us to actually put
Speaker 3: an audience on the target, because Hollywood will never cooperate.
Speaker 3: Even if you manage to make a great film, they'll
Speaker 3: never cooperate. They'll make it very difficult for you. With
Speaker 3: Ben and with what we've been doing at Truth Revolt,
Speaker 3: we can make something that's capable of marketing whatever we
Speaker 3: produced thereafter for this particular audience unquote. So there he's
Speaker 3: emphasizing that no matter the quality of the actual content
Speaker 3: you create. For this sort of conservative media ecosystem, you
Speaker 3: first need to actually build an audience that will be
Speaker 3: able to find it. That's like their first step is
Speaker 3: building up this audience, and then they can focus on
Speaker 3: actually making the content just because of how this distribution
Speaker 3: system works. That at least that was Jeremy's take on that.
Speaker 3: Do you know what else is really important for building
Speaker 3: up a sustainable audience? Products, that's right, trustworthy products and
Speaker 3: services that our audience knows are of of fantastic, fantastic quality.
Speaker 3: It's the it's the only way.
Speaker 2: We are also supported by the Wilkes Brothers, but but
Speaker 2: directly through selling hydraulic fracturing technology. So rack your backyard
Speaker 2: and join the frackvolution.
Speaker 3: We're fracking back here, all right. That was just a wonderful,
Speaker 3: a wonderful frack break. My back feels is so much,
Speaker 3: so much, so much more loose after that, I cracked like.
Speaker 2: The house across from me exploded when uh fracturing fluid
Speaker 2: released natural gas that was then ignited by an oven.
Speaker 3: Speaking of speaking of fracking, I think we're both actually,
Speaker 3: even though we're on different sides of the country, we're
Speaker 3: both in like a ridiculous cold freeze right now.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's it's pretty cold.
Speaker 3: Yes, it is twenty two degrees right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like sixteen or something here.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you're in Atlanta, so you are the last
Speaker 2: person alive in the entire city.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, but no, I'm sure for Racking has done
Speaker 3: nothing to contribute to this anyway. So let's turn our
Speaker 3: dials now to twenty twenty one once again. Normal year.
Speaker 3: Nothing bad happened, just a fun time overall. In twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one, the Daily Wire relocated from liberal Hollywood, California,
Speaker 3: to Nashville, Tennessee, with hopes of creating their own conservative
Speaker 3: entertainment empire in the music city. After over half a
Speaker 3: decade of building up an audience, the Daily Wire started
Speaker 3: to shift towards creating in house entertainment media like movies
Speaker 3: and TV, as well as producing their own neatly packaged
Speaker 3: documentaries to serve as a cultural catalyst in a way
Speaker 3: that a daily podcast show like The Shapiro Show just
Speaker 3: can't write like we put out a daily podcast, and
Speaker 3: because it's a daily show, it can only have a
Speaker 3: certain level of impact for all the things we cover
Speaker 3: in a way that you know, a highly produced documentary
Speaker 3: can have like a little bit more like easily observable
Speaker 3: impact just because of how it's being packaged. So they
Speaker 3: saw this and decided they wanted to start putting a
Speaker 3: lot of resources into their own documentaries as well as
Speaker 3: their podcasts. But it wasn't just documentaries. In twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: they also distributed their first movie, Run Hide Fight thirty
Speaker 3: eight percent on Rotten Tomatoes. It is a school shooter
Speaker 3: thriller movie that I have not watched. I've watched a
Speaker 3: lot of the Daily Wires a bitual content. I am
Speaker 3: not watching Run Hide Fight. I'm sorry, I'm just not
Speaker 3: doing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't really want to watch Diehard with school
Speaker 2: shooters and a teenage girl. That seems a bit on
Speaker 2: the nose. No, I simply refused. Four other original Daily
Speaker 2: Wire movies have come out since then, which we'll get
Speaker 2: to some of those in the next episode. Now, before
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, the Daily Wire was making some exclusive content
Speaker 2: behind like a membership paywall for something that they called
Speaker 2: Daily Wire All Access, But across twenty twenty one and
Speaker 2: into twenty twenty two, they rebranded and pivoted hard into
Speaker 2: promoting their own subscription based streaming service, The Daily Wire Plus. Again,
Speaker 2: they are nothing if not original. This was during a
Speaker 2: wave of plus branded streaming services. We have Disney Plus,
Speaker 2: we have Paramount Plus. I'm sure there's probably many others
Speaker 2: that I'm just not gonna bother even looking up. But
Speaker 2: the Daily Wire Plus the hit new streaming service that
Speaker 2: I'm sure your great uncle has.
Speaker 3: Quote. The Daily Wire Plus is the streaming home of
Speaker 3: the Daily Wire, Peterson Movies, Prager You and Daily Wire
Speaker 3: Kids were one of America's fastest growing media companies and
Speaker 3: counter cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. We're building
Speaker 3: the future you want to see unquote. That's their that's
Speaker 3: their little their little tagline thrilling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, truly, the new line cinema of racism.
Speaker 3: Such groundbreaking original content includes My Dinner with Trump?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I hadn't even heard of that one.
Speaker 2: Are you fucking kidding me?
Speaker 3: No, I'm not kidding. What is it?
Speaker 2: Is it actually on My Dinner with Andrea parody? Or
Speaker 2: is it just something completely disconnected that they stole a
Speaker 2: famous title for.
Speaker 3: If they just stole the famous title.
Speaker 2: For, damn it, it would be really funny if it
Speaker 2: was just a shot for shot remake of My Dinner
Speaker 2: with Andrea, but with with Andrea as Trump, Like I would,
Speaker 2: that's respectful.
Speaker 3: That's actually respectable.
Speaker 2: That would I would watch that movie tonight.
Speaker 3: No, it's it's it's just a filmed dinner with Trump
Speaker 3: and like various political advisors.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. Yeah, oh that's so lame.
Speaker 3: We have I don't believe the Daily Wires releasing their
Speaker 3: streaming metrics just like Netflix, they're camping them.
Speaker 2: Secret similar companies, Yeah, very similar.
Speaker 3: We have other other hit hit documentaries like Kanye West's Favorite,
Speaker 3: The Greatest Lie Ever Sold by Candace Owens. Oh god,
Speaker 3: an extremely racist misinformation or sorry, disinformation documentary about about
Speaker 3: George Floyd.
Speaker 1: We have.
Speaker 3: That Mandalorian actresses movie Terror on the Prairie. We have
Speaker 3: a whole bunch of a whole bunch of stuff from
Speaker 3: Jordan Peterson after he left uh the University of Toronto
Speaker 3: and got and got kicked off Twitter. That's the exact
Speaker 3: time that he was hired at Daily Wire. He's a
Speaker 3: whole bunch of stuff of just like roundtable discussions on
Speaker 3: like the Bible, and I believe he has that dragon mythology.
Speaker 2: Oh it's great now that that's that's a good show.
Speaker 2: I've watched all of that one that's Kobe and we
Speaker 2: we enjoyed ourselves quite a lot.
Speaker 3: We have We have a making a Murderer ripoff documentary
Speaker 3: by Candace Owens called Convicting a Murderer. Again, truly original stuff.
Speaker 2: Great.
Speaker 3: But it's not just movies, TV shows and documentaries. It's
Speaker 3: also like, like we mentioned, their their they're hit podcasts quote.
Speaker 3: The Daily Wire Plus podcast network is America's sixth largest
Speaker 3: podcast publisher and produces several of the top ranked podcasts
Speaker 3: in America, including The Ben Shapiro Show, The Jordan B.
Speaker 3: Peterson Podcast, Candace with Candace Owens, The Matt Wall Show,
Speaker 3: The Michael Knowles Show, and The Morning Wire, some of
Speaker 3: which do quite well on the charts and are often
Speaker 3: sometimes sometimes beaten by Robert's Podcast. Anyway, so, a little
Speaker 3: over a year ago, the Daily Wire Plus passed one
Speaker 3: million subscribers. We don't have any updated numbers on that,
Speaker 3: so it's probably quite higher now, but at least as
Speaker 3: of around a year ago they had a million subscribers,
Speaker 3: and again as of back then, it was bringing in
Speaker 3: the company two thirds of its annual revenue. I think
Speaker 3: it was like three or so years ago they were
Speaker 3: making one hundred million dollars a year, so they were
Speaker 3: making bank across their podcasts and exclusive content. They have
Speaker 3: over three hundred employees and are still growing and are
Speaker 3: investing hundreds of millions of dollars into producing original entertainment content.
Speaker 3: In their efforts to influence politics through entertainment media, they
Speaker 3: strive to create cultural events around the release of their
Speaker 3: original documentaries. The biggest success they've had with this is
Speaker 3: what was in twenty twenty two with What Is a Woman?
Speaker 3: Which rocketed the Daily Wire Plus into the online spotlight
Speaker 3: and proved there was great success to be had with
Speaker 3: this star of aggressive anti trans advocacy. The film also
Speaker 3: put the previously niche figure of Matt Walsh on the
Speaker 3: map and established Walsh as an authority in queer exterminationist campaigning.
Speaker 3: I've known of Walsh for like the past decade. After
Speaker 3: he had a short lived radio career, he made a
Speaker 3: name in Christian circles as a provocative blogger, sort of
Speaker 3: like a young firebrand of the Christian right. In the
Speaker 3: early twenty teens, he had a brief stint at Glenn
Speaker 3: Beck's The Blaze before being recruited to The Daily Wire
Speaker 3: in twenty seventeen to do a daily podcast. The goal
Speaker 3: of documentaries such as What Is a Woman? Beyond growing
Speaker 3: the Daily Wire's subscriber count is also to encourage real
Speaker 3: world action while converting attention from the documentary into actual
Speaker 3: real world harassment campaigns and live events, which fuel even
Speaker 3: more content. It's like this, It's like this weird content
Speaker 3: circle that the Daily Wire does. They create content to
Speaker 3: make these real world events, which then can fuel more content.
Speaker 3: It's this perfect loop that generates them a lot of money.
Speaker 3: On October twenty first, twenty twenty two, the Daily Wire
Speaker 3: put on a quote rally to end child mutilation at
Speaker 3: the Tennessee State Capitol, which was streamable on Daily Wire
Speaker 3: Plus exactly. This is a perfect example of creating this
Speaker 3: event that then allows them to also create exclusive content
Speaker 3: for their own streaming service. The Daily Wire has been
Speaker 3: incahoots with the state government of Tennessee ever since they
Speaker 3: first moved their headquarters there. Back in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: the General Assembly and Governor drafted a resolution welcoming the
Speaker 3: Daily Wire to the state. Jeremy Boring regularly gets invited
Speaker 3: to dinners at the Governor's mansion. After the release of
Speaker 3: What Is a Woman, the governor of Tennessee announced an
Speaker 3: investigation into a transgender health clinic in Nashville, and Walsh
Speaker 3: has made appearances at official state press conferences, and Tennessee's
Speaker 3: legislator has led the charge on following the Daily Wire
Speaker 3: and Walsh's political program to target trans people, ban drag shows,
Speaker 3: and lobbying school boards to ban LGBTQ materials in schools.
Speaker 3: The Daily Wire was they were kind of wise to
Speaker 3: not get too caught up in the Trumpian mud from
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen to twenty twenty, instead instead focusing on broader
Speaker 3: culture war issues ranging from anti liberalism, antidiversity, parental rights,
Speaker 3: religious rights, and attacks on LGBTQ people. But that also
Speaker 3: means that they didn't peak during the Trump era in
Speaker 3: the way that a lot of other conservative content people
Speaker 3: kind of did. They chose not to capitalize on the
Speaker 3: Trumpian alt right moment, and they were way too smart
Speaker 3: to go full QAnon. Instead, they were kind of waiting
Speaker 3: on the sidelines, slowly growing an audience to eventually find
Speaker 3: the right moment to catalyze more widespread support and thrust
Speaker 3: themselves into the spotlight, which they have now done by
Speaker 3: crafting anti queer propaganda to pick up the baton from
Speaker 3: the dying to a non movement, while moving the needle
Speaker 3: away from from like explicitly ce brain shit to simple
Speaker 3: stuff like parental rights and the more socially acceptable groomer
Speaker 3: and save the children talking points. The once more exotic
Speaker 3: target of pedophilic elites has been shifted to simply any
Speaker 3: random queer person, which is a much more tangible point
Speaker 3: of iyre. And that's where're gonna leave us here today,
Speaker 3: kind of on the point that the Daily Wire waited
Speaker 3: and found the moment in like the first year or
Speaker 3: two of the Biden presidency to really push themselves to
Speaker 3: be the own spotlight instead of just relying in the
Speaker 3: shadow of Donald Trump in the way that someone like
Speaker 3: Tucker kind of has now done. He's not nearly as
Speaker 3: popular as he was in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen,
Speaker 3: and the Daily Wire is now massively influential in a
Speaker 3: way that they were only kind of rising to prominence
Speaker 3: back during the Altright era. So in the next episode,
Speaker 3: we'll talk a little bit more about The Daily Wire's
Speaker 3: own anti queer advocacy and their push for original content,
Speaker 3: including a brand new child focused to streaming service, which
Speaker 3: I will talk about in the next episode. Anyway, Robert,
Speaker 3: do you have any do you have any thoughts on
Speaker 3: the Daily Wire?
Speaker 2: Well, I know that the child grooming service they're building
Speaker 2: a big part of what they're looking to do is
Speaker 2: try to copy the show Bluey, which is like the
Speaker 2: biggest thing in children's entertainment right now, and just casual
Speaker 2: knowledge of where that is, talking to parents and stuff
Speaker 2: about Bluey, Like, I feel like it might be a
Speaker 2: bridge too far for them, because they're they're they're they're
Speaker 2: trying to go after they're trying to capture like market
Speaker 2: from something that's legitimately really fucking good, as opposed to
Speaker 2: just put it like they're the they're kind of most
Speaker 2: commercially viable movies like the School Shooting movie are, from
Speaker 2: what I've read in reviews, like just kind of normal
Speaker 2: mid movies, Like they don't necessarily feel like a Daily
Speaker 2: Wire movie. There'll be a couple of points in there maybe,
Speaker 2: but they could more or less pass for something you'd
Speaker 2: see on Netflix or Amazon Prime or whatever, which is
Speaker 2: you know, if you're competing with mid grade action movies
Speaker 2: and the like that are a dime a dozen, you
Speaker 2: can actually do that fairly well. And it's even possible
Speaker 2: to like well. The economics of streaming are actually deeply obscure,
Speaker 2: but theoretically it's possible to do as well with that
Speaker 2: as Netflix does with it, right because people, But if
Speaker 2: you're trying to replace a children's show that, like kids
Speaker 2: consume voraciously and are deeply in love with and is
Speaker 2: really well made, I think that's actually a lot harder
Speaker 2: than they're guessing it's going to be. Like yeah, word,
Speaker 2: adults who want something to watch when they're drunk at
Speaker 2: night are a harder audience than little kids who are
Speaker 2: obsessed with a TV show that is the best in
Speaker 2: its market.
Speaker 3: It's certainly a gamble, and we will talk more about
Speaker 3: the details of this gamble in the next episode, as
Speaker 3: we will also eventually eventually talk about their brand new
Speaker 3: movie that came out last month, Ladyballers. All right, we're
Speaker 3: do I.
Speaker 2: Feel like I should call hr just because you mentioned
Speaker 2: the name of that movie.
Speaker 3: See you in the next episode.
Speaker 1: It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone
Speaker 1: Media For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our
Speaker 1: website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts,
Speaker 1: you can find sources for It could happen here, updated
Speaker 1: monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.